Mentor: A Memoir (5 page)
Authors: Tom Grimes
Meanwhile, Frank wore a literary halo. The first chapter of his novel,
Body & Soul
, had been published in the September issue of
GQ
. Sam Lawrence had given him a six-figure advance and Candida (I later learned) told Frank, “When Sam Lawrence pays you to sit down and write a novel, you sit down and write a novel,” although I believe Frank was intimidated by the idea of writing one. At the same time, his essay “Think About It” appeared in
The Best American Essays 1989
. The new publications resurrected his reputation and put him at ease. He no longer had to worry about directing the program with a relatively thin body of work. Frank had a slight overbite, and a lick of his silver hair continually fell across his right eye and he had to brush it back. His hands appeared large, his fingers long, ideal for a piano player. He smiled more than he laughed, as if he always held something back. And despite his success, I detected in him a quality (which I knew to be not entirely true) of a boy who had leapt from adolescence straight into accomplished adulthood. He, Charlie, and I talked about writers and writing in an offhand way, referring to Faulkner as if he lived down the street. As we drank, the evening slid into timelessness. At some point, Frank vanished, and Charlie and I closed the bar. The next morning, I woke with a hangover and went directly to work.
Body & Soul
, had been published in the September issue of
GQ
. Sam Lawrence had given him a six-figure advance and Candida (I later learned) told Frank, “When Sam Lawrence pays you to sit down and write a novel, you sit down and write a novel,” although I believe Frank was intimidated by the idea of writing one. At the same time, his essay “Think About It” appeared in
The Best American Essays 1989
. The new publications resurrected his reputation and put him at ease. He no longer had to worry about directing the program with a relatively thin body of work. Frank had a slight overbite, and a lick of his silver hair continually fell across his right eye and he had to brush it back. His hands appeared large, his fingers long, ideal for a piano player. He smiled more than he laughed, as if he always held something back. And despite his success, I detected in him a quality (which I knew to be not entirely true) of a boy who had leapt from adolescence straight into accomplished adulthood. He, Charlie, and I talked about writers and writing in an offhand way, referring to Faulkner as if he lived down the street. As we drank, the evening slid into timelessness. At some point, Frank vanished, and Charlie and I closed the bar. The next morning, I woke with a hangover and went directly to work.
I put in seventy hours a week. Beginning at eight fifteen, I wrote for three to four hours. I taught two afternoons a week. In the evening, I graded student essays. I read a novel a week (some five hundred pages long) for a seminar. I read the hundreds of stories submitted to the
Iowa Review
, where I was an editorial assistant. And I critiqued my peers’ workshop stories, stunned at how bad some were. I’d expected to read impressive and publishable work; instant and daunting classics, like the stories Flannery O’Connor had written as an Iowa student. But most (not all) of what I plucked off the shelves outside the MFA office, where each week ’s stories and poems were stacked on Friday afternoons, depressed me. “Minimalist” fiction was in vogue—this was 1989—and to me it had the effect of making the majority of my classmates timid. Understatement, ambiguity, minor epiphanies. Marriages collapsed because husbands forgot to stop at the dry cleaners or pick up a baguette. Don DeLillo called it “around the house and in the yard” subject matter. Raymond Carver’s plain, unadorned style seemed easy to imitate (it wasn’t). Characters were almost universally earnest, every writer terrified of committing to the page a politically incorrect remark. Stories became precious and, while making margin notes designed to help a classmate—which is why we’d come to Iowa, to give support and in return to get it—I often wondered if my work was as flimsy, unpolished, and lacking in imagination, and I feared that it was. I doubted my ability, so I worked harder, revising pages and erasing what I’d written in pencil repeatedly until I had rubbed through a sheet of notebook paper. My writing improved. It gained power and fluidity. Sentences now came rapidly, with fewer flaws.
Iowa Review
, where I was an editorial assistant. And I critiqued my peers’ workshop stories, stunned at how bad some were. I’d expected to read impressive and publishable work; instant and daunting classics, like the stories Flannery O’Connor had written as an Iowa student. But most (not all) of what I plucked off the shelves outside the MFA office, where each week ’s stories and poems were stacked on Friday afternoons, depressed me. “Minimalist” fiction was in vogue—this was 1989—and to me it had the effect of making the majority of my classmates timid. Understatement, ambiguity, minor epiphanies. Marriages collapsed because husbands forgot to stop at the dry cleaners or pick up a baguette. Don DeLillo called it “around the house and in the yard” subject matter. Raymond Carver’s plain, unadorned style seemed easy to imitate (it wasn’t). Characters were almost universally earnest, every writer terrified of committing to the page a politically incorrect remark. Stories became precious and, while making margin notes designed to help a classmate—which is why we’d come to Iowa, to give support and in return to get it—I often wondered if my work was as flimsy, unpolished, and lacking in imagination, and I feared that it was. I doubted my ability, so I worked harder, revising pages and erasing what I’d written in pencil repeatedly until I had rubbed through a sheet of notebook paper. My writing improved. It gained power and fluidity. Sentences now came rapidly, with fewer flaws.
One evening in workshop, I raised my hand when Frank asked for the following week’s submissions and he said, “You and you,” meaning me and someone I no longer remember. (This happened a third of my lifetime ago.) I submitted my chapter for photocopying and then returned to work, feeling exposed and vulnerable.
I aimed for five hundred words a day, sometimes more. The novel’s momentum had increased, but I couldn’t determine if the story was good or bad. It felt right, but that didn’t mean it was right. Often what feels best reads worst. Nevertheless, I wrote seven days a week and I stopped in midsentence—using Hemingway’s trick, which helped. Often, I would revise the previous morning’s page before continuing. Frank hadn’t read a word of what I’d written since my arrival, and, even though it had become our habit after workshop to sit together at the Mill, he never asked about the novel’s progress. So I didn’t know how he’d react to the new chapter, which increased my anxiety. But he had a stake in what I submitted to workshop as well. One afternoon I’d learned why everyone but Charlie treated me oddly. At the end of an editorial meeting for the
Iowa Review
, yet another person said, “Oh, you’re the baseball guy.” Immediately, I turned to Fritz McDonald, a second-year student who sat beside me. I said, “Would you please tell me what’s up with the baseball shit?!” He lowered his head and, even though we now were the only ones in the room, he spoke softly. “Well, last spring, Frank came out of his office holding your manuscript, shouting, ‘Get me this guy’s telephone number.’ Some of the TWIFs [second-year teaching-writing assistants who teach creative writing classes and screen application manuscripts] read your pages and thought DeLillo had submitted his work as a goof.” Later, I heard that Fritz had referred to me as “Golden Boy,” but his comment didn’t bother me because I had absolutely no confidence, and I worked manically, out of terror. Only Charlie understood that I was a bundle of neuroses, plagued by moods that swung from elation to despair.
Iowa Review
, yet another person said, “Oh, you’re the baseball guy.” Immediately, I turned to Fritz McDonald, a second-year student who sat beside me. I said, “Would you please tell me what’s up with the baseball shit?!” He lowered his head and, even though we now were the only ones in the room, he spoke softly. “Well, last spring, Frank came out of his office holding your manuscript, shouting, ‘Get me this guy’s telephone number.’ Some of the TWIFs [second-year teaching-writing assistants who teach creative writing classes and screen application manuscripts] read your pages and thought DeLillo had submitted his work as a goof.” Later, I heard that Fritz had referred to me as “Golden Boy,” but his comment didn’t bother me because I had absolutely no confidence, and I worked manically, out of terror. Only Charlie understood that I was a bundle of neuroses, plagued by moods that swung from elation to despair.
I entered the next workshop as taut as a guitar string ready to snap. I’d staked my identity on my novel, and my novel’s worth on Frank’s opinion of it. What if my new work disappointed him? Emotionally, I was still a boy, and I’d projected my desire for a father onto him. No matter what others said about my work, the only important voice to me that day was Frank’s.
As the author, I wasn’t permitted to speak on my work’s behalf. Instead, others spoke as if I weren’t in the room. (At least, in theory.) Personal attacks weren’t tolerated; we focused exclusively on the text. (Not that comments didn’t sting, or, in rare instances, reduce someone to tears.) As always, Frank asked someone to begin the discussion. Then we argued about narrative grace, about a story’s flaws, about what “worked” and “didn’t work.” People often said they “wanted more,” although what “more” was wanted remained ambiguous. Some students were silent and never commented. Others suggested the existence of nonexistent problems. Initially, Frank stayed out of the conversation, but his reputation for fierce, often scathing criticism influenced what was said. To him, sentences were fiction’s bedrock. If a writer’s sentences lacked aesthetic integrity, if the sentences were careless, sloppy, clichéd, or imprecise, the story failed. Also, a character’s actions had to be understood at a purely functional level, which might involve a character simply starting a car. (“When did we learn the character was old enough to drive?! He behaves like a twelve-year-old!”) Motivation had to be irrefutable. (Why does she run off to Canada?! All her boyfriend said was, “Can I call you back?!”) Then Frank would lower his voice and advise us to “use exclamation points infrequently.”
I remember little of what was said. Mainly, my peers hated the chapter. “I was lost.” “Do people really speak this way?” “If the narrator’s a baseball player, how come he’s intelligent?” One exchange, however, resonates so vividly that when I recall it I feel like I am sitting in room 457, thirty-four years old again, rather than fifty-four.
Steve Kiernan said to Frank, “There are too many metaphors.”
“Where?”
“Page three, next to last paragraph.”
Frank scanned the passage, along with the rest of us. “I don’t see a problem.”
“Can I read the paragraph?”
“Sure.”
“The next pitch glided by me with a cartoon slowness, the drug (a cigar-sized joint) letting out the waistline of time, seconds doing rubber-band stretches. A lost-in-space weightlessness flowed through me as I saw the ball stop and hover, still as a hummingbird, over the plate [my narrator was at bat], while I, insubstantial as a movie image, slashed and chopped at it like some amphetamine-crazed samurai.”
“So?”
“So, he’s in a cartoon, time’s slowing down, the ball’s a hummingbird, he’s a movie image
and
a samurai?”
and
a samurai?”
“What do you want? He’s stoned!”
Earlier, Frank had read a long phrase from the text aloud. I’d written, “. . . the earth, in that drought year, as dense, hot, and parched as a pizza stone.”
“You see the image,” Frank said. “It’s concrete, and the relationship between object and simile is superbly balanced.”
Frank’s comments made me uncomfortable. Was he defending
my
work, or
his
judgment? Maybe my application manuscript
hadn’t been
scholarship material. Or perhaps the new work hadn’t lived up to the earlier work’s promise. At one point, Charlie suggested that the novel’s ambition could be found in its prose. Otherwise, no one agreed with Frank, the conversation’s energy died, and class ended.
my
work, or
his
judgment? Maybe my application manuscript
hadn’t been
scholarship material. Or perhaps the new work hadn’t lived up to the earlier work’s promise. At one point, Charlie suggested that the novel’s ambition could be found in its prose. Otherwise, no one agreed with Frank, the conversation’s energy died, and class ended.
I stayed behind until the voices in the stairwell faded to silence. Then I slipped into my denim jacket and walked into the hall. Headed for the elevators, Frank stopped when he saw me. “They didn’t get it,” he said. He compared my wild prose to the comic anarchy of a Marx Brothers skit. “Worry about maintaining the power of the voice. Forget the rest.” Then he hopped onto the elevator. I took the stairs. I wasn’t eager to stop at the Mill, but I had to. Otherwise, I’d appear to be sulking, rather than confused by all I’d heard.
In the packed bar, though, students who weren’t in my workshop but had read one of the copies left on the hallway’s shelves said they loved the chapter. It was funny, many claimed. And they’d heard the class went well. Max Phillips disagreed with Frank on a minor issue. Frank had suggested that I change “wanna” to “want to.” As in, “I don’t want to hit.” Max said, “But ‘wanna’ captures the character’s infantile nature.” I never made the change. To my ear, “want to” sounded stilted. As writers, debating this minutia constituted our lives.
All evening, I avoided Frank. I didn’t want anyone to think I’d approached him for consolation.
At my desk the following morning, my classmates’ voices rioted in my head. I couldn’t hear my narrator, and if I lost his voice I’d lose the novel. I worked for six hours and composed two sentences. But I’d silenced the other voices. And they never interfered with my work again.
CHAPTER FOUR
J
ody and I hadn’t experienced winter in three years.
ody and I hadn’t experienced winter in three years.
“Winter,” in Key West, meant a temperature plunge from 80 degrees to 60 degrees. Two days later, when the temperature reached 75, spring began. By late September in Iowa, though, the leaves had turned candle-flame yellow and apple red. Kids trick-or-treated on Halloween amid bare-limbed trees. And for the first time since I was a kid in Queens, I had to rake and bag leaves. From my desk, I could see the narrow road and the dingy garages and dying backyard grass that bordered it. The sun set at 4:30 PM, frost glazed our lawn each morning, and while pumpkins still rested on our neighborhood’s front porches, I completed Book One of my novel. Instinctively, I knew I’d reached its midpoint. Its scope could no longer be enlarged, no characters added. Conflicts would now be resolved, not developed. As always, I’d tracked how long I’d worked and how many words I’d produced daily in a small, gray-covered assignment pad. In seventy-two days I’d written one hundred and fifty-three pages. Of them, Frank had read only the chapter I’d put up in workshop. One night at the Mill, where we now regularly shared a table, I told him I was burning out. “So take a break,” he said. “Slow down.” I received no other advice from him. But in a sense, I didn’t need it. His presence was all that mattered.
Still, I couldn’t decide if he was my teacher, mentor, friend, father, or a composite of these figures. By chance, a French filmmaker making a documentary about America had come to Iowa City. He planned to include the workshop in his film, but baseball intrigued him as well. Foreigners can’t understand the game’s attraction. Why is it called our “national pastime”? And, unlike other sports, why does baseball lore and mythology exist? Frank told him that if someone could deconstruct baseball for the French, it was me. “He’s coming to the house to watch a World Series game,” Frank said after class. “Why don’t you come over?”
“Are you sure?” I said.
“Why wouldn’t I be sure? We’ll drink beer and watch a ball-game.”
I said, “Okay,” but later, at home, I began to agonize over the situation. My problem was that I didn’t know who to be in my relationship with Frank. “He wants to be your friend,” Jody said. “So be his friend.”
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